Cardiac troponin-I is not expressed in fetal and healthy or diseased adult human skeletal muscle tissue

Cardiac troponin-I (cTnI) is not found in sera of patients with skeletal muscle disease in the absence of myocardial injury. It is not known, however, whether trace amounts of cTnI are expressed in regenerating human skeletal muscle, as has been observed with creatine kinase MB. Using immunohistochemical and biochemical techniques, we investigated cTnI expression in various human muscle tissues: human heart tissue (n = 5), normal adult skeletal muscle (n = 3), and fetal heart (n = 3) and skeletal muscle (n = 3) obtained, respectively, during heart transplant, from autopsy, or from a tissue bank. Specimens from diagnostic tissue biopsies were used as diseased skeletal muscle: polymyositis (PM), n = 13; Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), n = 6. Frozen sections 8 microns thick were stained immunohistochemically for either cTnI or TnI (cardiac or skeletal) by using monoclonal antibodies (MAb) 2B1.9 (cTnI specific) or 3C5.10 (reactive with all TnI isoforms), respectively. cTnI was measured in tissue homogenates by an immunofluorometric assay. Cardiac muscle was stained by both MAbs. Normal fetal and adult skeletal muscle, and samples from all of the PM and DMD patients, stained only with the nonspecific MAb (3C5.10), confirming the sole presence of skeletal TnI. No cTnI was detectable by immunoassay in any skeletal muscle sample. We conclude that cTnI is not expressed in human skeletal muscle during development or during regenerative muscle disease processes such as PM or DMD.